Thoughts from the intersection of science, pseudoscience, and conflict.

Last week, our son Ox had an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine. I’m glad, and I’m grateful.

First, the downside. Ox came home from daycare with a fever hovering around 100° F/38° C. That’s high enough to worry first-time parents, and it was persistent. By Friday night he’d been feverish for days and couldn’t sleep. When we measured him at 103°/39°, we finally called the pediatric nurse hotline at the local children’s hospital. The nurse was cool, calm, confident, and knowledgeable, just as you expect a nurse to be. She listened to a first-time dad ramble on about his boy’s fever and then let us know that it sounded like a reaction to the MMR vaccine he’d had the week before.

For his first birthday, Ox got a checkup, the MMR, and a flu shot.

It’s possible that he simply came down with a normal fever and the timing was a coincidence. A lot of reported adverse reactions to vaccines are coincidences. But his experience closely fits the profile of a known vaccine reaction. Fevers are one of the most common adverse reactions to vaccines, affecting about ten percent of kids after their MMR shots. Our experience was worse than the typical fever; Ox spiked above the usual ceiling of 103° and it lasted a little longer than the standard two days.

Ox is fine today, but I don’t want to minimize the downside. Fevers can be dangerous, of course, leading to dehydration and other serious complications. And while Ox came through just fine, he suffered. He spent a few hot, cranky days unable to sleep or eat comfortably. That hit us, too. As new and first-time parents we don’t have a lot of perspective on what’s serious and what’s not; when the baby’s feverish for that long, it’s scary and upsetting. It also disrupts our lives; we’re very busy but Ox is our priority, so when he’s sick, it’s hard to keep all the other plates spinning efficiently.

Sick little boys get Star Wars stories.

But it’s good news, over all. Ox spiked a scary fever and spend a miserable few days waiting for it to break, and I’d have him do it again in a heartbeat. Because that fever is an indication that his immune system is responding to his MMR shot, which means he’s developing a powerful, natural immune response to dangerous diseases that could leave him deaf, sterile, or even dead.

Ox suffered an adverse reaction thanks to his pediatrician and the nurses, and I’m sincerely grateful for it. They gave him a shield against pathogens that evolved specifically to attack and ravage him, and that have seriously hurt unvaccinated kids in our community. And they helped make him into a shield in turn, protecting other children through communal immunity.

To Ox’s nurses and doctors and to all the doctors and nurses giving vaccines every day: thank you. You’re standing between our child and a world of suffering, and we’ll always be grateful—even when it causes a fever.

If you want to test their reliability, see if you can figure out where that number originally comes from. It would be an interesting discussion. But just copying and pasting conspiracy theories isn’t a very productive conversation.

Your numbers have already been debunked. Real scientists that appeared in “Vaxxed” have already said that their words were edited out of context in order to make them say something different.
You talk about US and UK statistics but forget that there is a world out there where sanitation wasn’t available to keep polio away. How do you (or your sources) explain polio mostly disappearing from, say, India or central Africa where sanitation is most often nonexistent?
How do you (or they) explain that measles outbreaks in Netherlands have happened mostly in unvaccinated dutch communities? They have sanitation as the rest of the country.

Your experience is similar to my experience of measles in the very early 60s, and like me the vast majority of people who had measles came through it okay after “a few hot, cranky days”.

Of course I understand that this doesn’t mean a very small percentage of people didn’t have that same few small hot cranky days as I did but I’m not sure you understand that for a few people, regardless of the differences between risk, their adverse reaction was far worse and they did not come through it okay but suffered permanent damage. It’s a small few, but I don’t think they’d be too understanding of your rather obvious, transparent attempt to belittle those who were permanently damaged from a more serious but rare adverse reaction to vaccines.

It actually was not “a very small percentage”. In recent outbreaks in the U.S. 20% of people were hospitalized. The same in Europe. Over 4% percentage of people with measles have pneumonia, 1:1000 encephalitis, 1:1000 dies. A high fever is the norm with measles; it’s 5-15% with MMR. MMR has nothing comparable to the risk profile with measles. I agree that the extraordinarily cases of people who suffer permanent damage from MMR – and it is extraordinarily rare – deserve sympathy. This story certainly doesn’t belittle that. I’m not sure how your read that in. It expresses sympathy to anyone who suffers.

We should sympathize with anyone suffering. We should also support vaccines that reduce the level of people who suffer longterm harms.

US and UK govt stats:
1880-1960
99% reduction in deaths from all infectious diseases, with reduction in numbers of cases
following after
BEFORE measles vaccine was started.
CDC website states that improvements in sanitation,
nutrition , working and living conditions were responsible.

Jane, you seem to just be copying and pasting bits of conspiracy theories.

It’s not true that there were 120 deaths from MMR, even if a website told you so. You can test this for yourself by digging deeper into their numbers. Where do they get that phony statistic, and why doesn’t it match the real numbers?

And yes, sanitation is great. But sanitation didn’t make smallpox extinct. Vaccines did. And when measles comes back in mini-epidemics in the United States, it’s not because people in Kansas City and Los Angeles forgot how to take baths–it’s because vaccination rates dropped too far and preventable diseases started hurting kids again.

We have five children, two had the same reaction as Ox did. Our youngest is now 24, oldest 31. Our 28 year old is a physician and is giving her daughter the recommended vaccines on schedule. Different vaccine, but my mom had polio as a 25 year old adult in 1950 and at 93 years old she is grateful that none of her grand kids or five great grand kids will suffer like she has all of her life.

i am 67. lived in 3 continents.
know of only 3 cases if suspected polio in my family, friends and neighbors.
back then people got together and talked, listened to the same radio and television, read the same paper. no one ever talked about any “ epidemics” of
any childhood diseases. small pox was already pretty non existent.
all infectious diseases of the 19th Cc were down in death rates by 99% before the 1950s and 1960s BEFORE mass vaccines were used. CDC website
states that improved sanitation, indoor plumbing, better nutrition, working and living conditions were responsible.
and CONTINUE to be the reason we are staying epidemic free. as long as we have goid hygiene, clean water, air, food and living conditions.

And I can only imagine how new parents like you who see a fever and later see other problems – like autism – might be tempted to make the connection between the temporary fever and the child’s longterm issues.

ok “ Doritt”
that comment was sarcastic
because they apparently DID read the article.
that parent comes off as uneducated about what natural immunity is. that parent seems to believe that only a vaccine will protect her
child.
the comment made was just carryied out to the absurd:
“oh, she was happy he had a fever reaction, just think how
ecstatic she would be if he died!”

I think your numbers are off. There have not been 120 deaths from the MMR in that time period. Did you get that number from the original data, or an internet conspiracy theorist?

Nor did the Thompson study show that vaccines were causing autism in black babies, or any babies at all. Thompson was worried that the data showed that, but when anti-vaxers reviewed the original data they were unable to show either that the CDC hid real data or that the data showed any causative connection between vaccines and autism. Again, even anti-vaxers weren’t able to show any such connection.

I would add that the main reason deaths from measles are low is because cases are low, thanks to still relatively high vaccines rates. A quick look at Europe teaches us that as vaccines rates drop and measles comes back, deaths do not stay low.

if any claims in the movie
“ VAXXED” were untrue, the claims i understood and posted,
then there would have been
major lawsuits against the producers, writers and others.
not one single lawsuit. why?
because the facts in the movie are true.
Congressman Bill Posey from Florida has been appealing to Congress for a hearing to subpeana Dr. William Thompson. Thompson gave thousands of hard copies of data to him.
your attempt to literally white wash history and further hide the damage done to all those children is deplorable.

Jane, have you ever in your life heard of someone suing a movie because it lied about the facts? I can’t think of any examples. That’s because libel laws don’t really work that way. Especially in the case of Vaxxed, because the government doesn’t sue people for defamation ever, under any circumstances. That’s why there were no lawsuits, even though the producers very definitely deceived audiences.

You’ll see that he and the movie producers were very dishonest. They can do that with impunity, because no one would or even really could sue them for making a scaremongering documentary.

The facts are the facts. Thompson didn’t need to hand over any documents because the CDC didn’t destroy any of the original study data. (The movie tries to convince people that it did, but they never found a single bit of study data that the CDC ever tried to destroy.) There’s a reason why Thompson’s final word on the subject was to ask parents to vaccinate. It’s because vaccines are safe and effective, no matter what the conspiracy theorists want you to believe.

Perfect example of astroturfing for big pharma.
Complete with the obligatory fake comments applauding the OP.
Desperate attempt to hold back the tide of changing perceptions of the hoax that is the vaccine program.

It seems as if you find these parents experience and views threatening. But it is easy to check on who they are – they use their real names – and find that they do not work for big pharma. They are providing their experience, and adding fact-based, referenced information. I recommend reading it.

All governments in the world support vaccines. They do so on the basis of data that comes from all around the world. To believe vaccine programs are a hoax, you have to assume tens of thousands of experts and health officials, all around the world, are either fooled or bought. That is not very realistic.

most of the drs are not taught anything about vaccines in medical school.
most ER drs are not taught to report all adverse reactions to
Vaccine Adverse Reactions Reporting System as part of the Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
most people grow up believing
in vaccines.
those same people become parents, doctors, politicians, drug reps,. medical research students are discouraged from finding out the truth. if they discover a cure for something it is scrapped. if their child is injured or dies right after a shot, no one in the medical field considers that a possibility.
the number one reason that belief in vaccine theory is so strong is this:
FEAR of DEATH by DISEASE.
read Dr. Suzanne Humphries book, co-authored by Roman Bystrianyk,
“ Dissolving Illusions… true history of vaccines”
people call her a quack. she isn’t. read the book anyway.
also
“ A SHOT IN THE DARK” co- authored by Barbara Loe Fischer. founder of the
National Vaccine Information Center. org
and follow the utube videos of
Forrest MaReady, and read his book “ Crooked”, based on the work of the late Dr. Moulden.

“most of the drs are not taught anything about vaccines in medical school.”
Did you even stop to check the curriculum at any university teaching medicine?https://meded.hms.harvard.edu/pathways
Harvard teaches basic immunology to every one of its students.

Scary, upsetting and disruptive. Those describe the turmoil you’d go through if Ox came down with a bad case of mumps or measles…if you were lucky. Thanks for sharing your story and thanks for being health-conscious parents who vaccinate (not that there was much cause for doubt on that score). Welcome the the further adventures of parenting.

fever and headache signal an inflammatory reaction. neurological
reaction. fever is bodys’ attempt at fighting off an infection or toxin.
baby can’t clearly say if he had headache or not.
the natural measles, mumps, rubella
would have primed the immune system in the same way… most likely at a later age when the babys’ innate immune system starts to develop. age 3.
if baby is kept clean at home and breast fed, then it is not likely to get sick the first 6 months to a year.
natural immunity through breast milk.
especially if mother was not vaccinated, especially not during pregnancy. these well-known facts and more can be learned on utube lectures
that Dr. Humphries gave in Sweden.

The “natural measles, mumps, rubella” are dangerous diseases that could have seriously hurt or even killed my child. I don’t want that. I want him protected from disease, and I will happily accept a 10% chance of a fever in exchange for him not going deaf or becoming sterile or dying of measles, mumps, or rubella.

Dr. Humphries is not an expert on vaccines, or even on diseases. She makes her money selling homeopathy and conspiracy theories; her lectures are designed to scare people, not inform them.